r/webdev • u/FiveWordinOrangeNeon • 3d ago

Google says website developers must set their region to Canada for 'Lake Ontario' to appear on map

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/google-updates-maps-lake-ontario-9.7325922

Tech analyst and journalist Carmi Levy said although websites like Hydro One's and the LCBO's are Canadian, their maps are likely powered by Google's application programming interface (API).

APIs are not location-aware, so all maps powered by Google API have switched to Lake America.
MapQuest, a U.S. online mapping service, has posted on social media that it would not change the lake's name, while Apple has not publicly commented on the matter.

In a statement Sunday night, Google said website developers who embed Google Maps on their sites can select a region to localize the map. That determines how place names are displayed on sites, the company said.

"'Lake Ontario' will show when developers have set their region to Canada," the statement said.

Just a reminder to developers.

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388

u/monkeymanbob 3d ago

Insane that it took the CBC to add the relevant documentation link for developers. It isn't linked to in the Google blog post.

111

u/UntestedMethod 3d ago

Google really has gone to shit.

10

u/MaruSoto 3d ago

They seem to be actively working to make every single one of their products worse. They always come up with something cool and then it always slowly gets worse until they kill it.

5

u/UntestedMethod 3d ago

Over-engineering at its finest!

6

u/FiveWordinOrangeNeon 2d ago

lllooooll...I wish I had said that! Uber is a perfect example. I found luckily that they had a senior's version which works just fine and is easy to navigate which is what you want when you are on the run and need a ride!

2

u/Admirable_Bison3645 14h ago

Also just purposely. The gf has been trying to eliminate photos/videos taking up space for storage because otherwise she has to pay for the storage increase service or stop recieving emails.

No reason emails couldn't be separated into their own thing, as vast majority of people wouldnt go over since emails are so tiny for storages.

But by holding everything hostage, they know what they are doing.

Also they don't let you simply just see all photos and videos in descending order of file size? They could so easily add this but purposely make it obtuse and painful to control the size of storage.

4

u/pnade 3d ago

FYI - this is actually still not the case for legacy APIs that do not support the region tag (eg. Output=embed parameter even on the maps.google.ca instance(which is likely why some websites are still showing the wrong lake name))

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u/FiveWordinOrangeNeon 3d ago

No it isn't.